One of my best friends is not particularly good-looking, but he’s always dating really attractive women. I wanted to know what his secret was, so I asked him. He said “I talk to a lot of women. Most of them are not into me, but some are.” I then asked him if all those rejections made him feel bad. I’ll never forget his answer: “It’s like basketball: you make some and you miss some.”
What if we could redefine losing? What if losing was a necessary step toward winning? What would happen if we allowed ourselves to fail as much as needed in order to achieve our goals?
One of the best salespeople I know loves cold-calling. I mean, he LOVES it. He knows he has something great to sell and only people who want it will buy it. The rest will say no and he’s OK with that. It’s not personal and he knows it. The more people he calls, the more money he makes. “Who cares if some people don’t buy as long as some do?” he told me.
Thinking you need to win every time is very dangerous; it puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on you and it stops you from trying new, unproven ideas (and these are the best kinds of ideas).
One of my best friends has a drug problem. When I talked to a friend we have in common about doing an intervention, his response was “there’s a 10% chance that talking to him will work. It’s just not worth it.” I responded “that’s better than a 0% chance, which is exactly what our odds are if we don’t talk to him.”
Try new stuff all the time. Go after big, crazy dreams even if your chances aren’t good. It’s just a matter of time until you hit a home run. And even if you don’t, wouldn’t you rather know that the reason you didn’t make it was that it didn’t work out and not for a lack of trying?
